I thought our space program was killed? We have this much money and we can fight wars? All this dough could be spent saving me gas money or reducing the national debt before we have to give Hawaii to China to pay off. China would probably say that is not enough, you gotta throw in California too.

NASAs annual budget is 0.5% of the US Budget.

yes, the curiosity rover project will cost $2.5b... but its a 4 year program.

the afghanistan/iraq wars have cost trillions of dollars and the whatever the "final" number they release when they pull out will still be lowball, because you have to account for years and years of medical expenses for the veterans.

its blatantly obvious where the money to start to pay off the debt should come from; and its not the part of the budget that accounts for 0.5%

It is extremely well spent. I want a book report from all you fools that think our space program is a waste of money on the amount of technology that has resulted from it.

you are expecting a book report from someone who cannot read

i clearly mentioned at the top of this page that NASAs annual budget is 0.5% of the national budget

these people see a large number like $2.5b and think it represents an incredible percentage of the USA annual spending just because $2.5b is a lot to an individual

Canada, Russia, Spain and France all contributed to the rover project with technology and labor. This creates jobs in all of these countries, attracts the most brilliant minds, and paves the way to new technological innovations whose practical use often benefits other private business groups.

The alternative is the united states cuts NASAs budget and the US loses thousands of jobs to China, suffers further brain drain and falls behind in the development of new industries and technology

The first 360-degree colour panorama is made up of low-resolution thumbnails. It will take a while to get the hi-res frames down

08.09.2012Gale Crater Vista, in Glorious ColorThis is the first 360-degree panorama in color of the Gale Crater landing site taken by NASA's Curiosity rover. The panorama was made from thumbnail versions of images taken by the Mast Camera.

Scientists will be taking a closer look at several splotches in the foreground that appear gray. These areas show the effects of the descent stage's rocket engines blasting the ground. What appeared as a dark strip of dunes in previous, black-and-white pictures from Curiosity can also be seen along the top of this mosaic, but the color images also reveal additional shades of reddish brown around the dunes, likely indicating different textures or materials.

The images were taken late Aug. 8 PDT (Aug. 9 EDT) by the 34-millimeter Mast Camera. This panorama mosaic was made of 130 images of 144 by 144 pixels each. Selected full frames from this panorama, which are 1,200 by 1,200 pixels each, are expected to be transmitted to Earth later. The images in this panorama were brightened in the processing. Mars only receives half the sunlight Earth does and this image was taken in the late Martian afternoon.